AIAS FORUM 2008: \"Architecture in
Motion\"
\"From Architecture to Wikitecture: How
Virtual Worlds and Web 2.0 Will
Revolutionize the Profession
– Part 2/2\"
Presented by Ryan Schultz
December 31st 1:00-2:00PM
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
view in full screen to read transcript

What i want to do right now, is
shift gears a little and try to Virtual Worlds and the Building Industry...
paint for you a broader
picture of why these virtual
worlds will become more
important for architects in the
near future. I'll end, with the
last 10 minutes or so, giving
you a little tour of Second Life
and how our group, 'Studio
Wikitecture', is using it as a
platform to design a
humanitarian project in
Nepal.
But first, in order to take you
through the logic of why i
think these virtual worlds are
important for architects, i
want to paint for you a
picture that zooms out past
architecture, to the world of
business at large and how
information technologies, in
general, will change the way
we will conduct business in
the future.
We are in the early stages of a change toward much more human freedom in business and this change, by many accounts, is as important
for businesses as the change to democracy has been for governments.
This is happening because information technologies are lowering the cost of communication to such a level that it is now possible, for the first
time in human history, to have the economic benefits of very large organizations, things like economies of scale and knowledge, while at
the same time, have the human benefits of small organizations; things like freedom, flexibility, creativity, and motivation.

In fact, lowering the cost of
communication through these The Key Factor: Lower the Cost of Communication
technologies has been the
key and critical factor in how Printing Press
humans have been and will Writing
continue to organize Telegraphs & Telephones
themselves in the future.
For example, as this slide
illustrates, the invention of
writing, one of the first
information technology
inventions, allowed for
societies to organize
themselves into larger and
larger groups such as
kingdoms and nations.
Continuing on, the invention
of the printing press allowed
for the formation of
democracies and finally, the
invention of technologies
such as the telegraph and
telephone, provided the
backbone for the formation of Corporations
corporations.
Kingdoms & Nations
Democracies

With the new generation of
technologies, such as email,
From Centralized to Decentralized Organizations...
the internet, instant
messaging, it is now
becoming possible, for the first
time in human history, to
Email Cheap
move beyond these Telegraphs & Telephones
centralized corporations and Long
create organizations which
are more 'decentralized' in
Distance
nature.
Instant
Messaging
Internet
Centralized Corporations Decentralized Organizations

These decentralized
organizations are fast
emerging as an alternate
model of production Decentralized Organizations...
compared to more
traditional, centralized
approaches. A model of
production that has proven to
be more efficient and
effective in harnessing human
skill, creativity, and ingenuity.
What this means is that
workplaces will become
smaller and teams will be
more distributed, with
participants drawn from all
over the globe - where less
focus will be on enterprise
and more focus on endeavor.
In short, it will allow for more free-
agency—people will be
allowed to self-organize and
self-select those projects that
are in their best interest rather
than be squeezed into some
corporate hierarchy.
So when people are able to
make more decisions for
themselves they are often
more creative, more flexible,
and often more motivated.
Which, in the end, are
preciously the factors for
success in our increasingly
knowledge based, innovation
driven society.

So other generic email or instant
messaging, what other Web 2.0...
burgeoning technology
platforms are facilitating a
more decentralized work
Web 2.0 is defined a perceived second generation of web-based communities
world? and web platforms that facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between
users.
As a broad stoke gesture, these
platforms fall under what is
called the Web 2.0
movement. Of which I’m sure
you are quite aware of a few
of the more prominent
platforms, such as Wikipedia,
Flickr, and YouTube, to name
a few.
In general, Web 2.0 is defined a
second generation of web-
based communities and web
platforms that facilitate
creativity, collaboration, and
sharing among users.
Web 2.0 provides the shared canvas where every splash of paint
My anecdotal favorite, however, contributed by one user provides a richer tapestry for the next user to
is that Web 2.0 provides the
shared canvas where every modify or build on.
splash of paint contributed by
one user provides a richer
tapestry for the next user to
modify or build on.
I would now like to take you through a couple examples of organizations, both private and non-profit, that are using these Web 2.0
technologies to create platforms on which this more decentralized production is taking place - which will then lead us back to how these
technologies will effect the architectural profession.

Open Source Software vs. Closed Proprietary Software...
To begin with, there’s the open
source software movement in
general. Which, I believe,
deserves a lot of credit for
creating the foundational
mindset for many of these
other Web 2.0 platforms.
In short, open source software
development is based on
‘source code’ that is freely
available for anyone to use.
Operating Systems
The source code, which are the
instructions or building blocks
of the software, so to speak, is
licensed in such a manner
that no one person or
company can ever own it.
Browsers
By making the source code for the software available to everyone, any programmer can modify it to better suit their needs and, then in turn,
redistribute the improved version to others users. By working together, a community of both users and developers can improve the
functionality and quality of the software over time.
So as you can see from the slide, this movement has created projects such as the Linux Operating system, which is fast becoming even more
prevalent than Microsoft Windows. It has also created, the Firefox browser, who's major contender is Internet Explorer.

In fact, the list of active
programs, developed in this
Open Source Software vs. Closed Proprietary Software...
open source manner, is in the
thousands and continues to
grow everyday as you can
see from this slide.

Another example of an up and
coming Web 2.0 platform is a
company called Innocentive.
Innocentive works a little bit like
ebay, but instead of bringing Solution Seekers Solution Providers
buyers and sellers together, it
brings solution seekers
together with innovative
solution providers.
In other words, organizations can
post specific R&D problems
and have, in turn, a global
network of independent
engineers, scientists and
inventors provide solutions to
these problems.
Innocentive works a little bit like eBay, but instead of bringing buyers and sellers
It has been enormously together, it brings solution seekers together with innovative solution providers.
successful, not solely because
companies are able to tap Through Innocentive, commercial, academic, and nonprofit organizations can
into some of the brightest
minds in the field, but they are
post specific R&D problems and have, in turn, a global network of independent
able to tap into more diverse engineers, scientists and inventors provide innovation solutions to these
set of minds as well....for problems.
instance you have
mathematicians solving
chemistry problems and the
like.

Peer collaboration and
distributed production is not
just limited to information
goods like software or
research, but can be applied
to physical products as well.
Here a company called
CrowdSpirit is using these
concepts and applying them
to the design of consumer
electronics.
Through their website, users are
able submit ideas for
electronic products that the
community, in turn, fine tunes
and votes on. The assumption
is that through the ‘wisdom of
crowds’ paradigm, the best
ideas and their product specs
will rise to the top.

This slide actually shows
schematic drawings of one of
the more popular projects the
community is developing as
we speak. It's a 'Digital Wall
Calender'.

So the exciting question is, how
can these paradigms of
decentralized collaboration,
peer production, crowd
wisdom and the like be How can it be applied to Architecture and Urban Planning?
harnessed to improve the
quality of architecture and
urban planning throughout
the world?
How can the lessons learned in
the open source production
of software and
encyclopedias be applied to
our built environment?
In fact, because buildings share
a lot of the same
characteristics with these
products being designed in
this manner, it seems, on the
surface anyway, that our
industry has a lot to learn from
these examples. How is architecture and urban planning
similar to these other products produced in
So what are these characteristics
then?... a decentralized manner...

Well for example, Architecture
and urban planning is, on a
It’s an infrastructure…
global scale, an “operating
system” or infrastructure on
which we “run” our lives. Like
Linux or Wikipedia, there are
certain aspects of our built
environment, especially the
infrastructure, that so many
different people rely on, that it
would be unwise if any one
organization owned or
controlled it.
cities are an infrastructure for
living
An operating system is an
infrastructure for programs and
applications

Like designing airplanes,
buildings are becoming so It’s complicated…
complicated that it’s
becoming a virtual
impossibility for any one
person or small group of
people to develop a design
to accommodate every
single parameter.

And finally, especially in the later
stages of development, the It can be broken down into small chunks or modules…
production and execution of
buildings, like the distributed
production of consumer
electronics, can be broken
down into smaller and smaller
modules.

So as you can see architecture
and urban planning share a
Open Architecture Network
lot of the same characteristics
with other physical products
that are also being subjected
to this decentralized
approach.
So are there any examples of this
taking place today in
architecture?
The most notable is a Web 2.0
platform called the Open
Architecture Network.
Started by Architecture for
Humanity, their mission is to
get architects and designers
involved in humanitarian work
and believe where resources
and expertise are scarce—
innovative design can really
make a difference in people’s
lives.
In this regard, they created the Open Architecture Network website to act as a conduit, so to speak, between these innovative designs and
the communities that could benefit from them.
In addition to providing a library of proven designs, the website acts as a platform for the practice of 'open source architecture'. That is, a
large majority of the designs submitted are licensed in such a way, that others are allowed and encouraged to improve upon the designs
and modify them to better accommodate unique and localized conditions
Because the design is reiterative, what you start seeing is an evolutionary process, where these designs continually improve over time

So although a more
decentralized approach can
Why the building industry needs to apply
be applied to architecture, a more decentralized approach?
why is it so crucial that the
building industry start learning
and applying these
principles?
Well of all the industries out there,
recent studies show that the
building industry is topping the
charts for being the most
200%
inefficient and wasteful—
inefficiencies causing the
industry, in some studies,
around 16 billion annually.
20%
As you can see from the slide,
outside farming, construction
has decreasing in productivity
since 1964, while, other
industries have increase by
over 200%.

The industry is ripe for both a
technical and cultural
A More Integrated Practice…
change in the way they
collaborate. In fact, the
American Institute of
Architects is slowly
acknowledging this massive
fragmentation and are calling
for a new type of approach
to the profession. They are
calling this new approach
‘Integrated Practice’.
There are a lot of long winded
definitions, but Integrated
Practice is basically a project
delivery method whereby all
the players involved in the
design of a building are
brought in as early in the
design phase as possible and
though not always the case,
they usually collaborate
around a singe 'live' model
known as a BIM... of which I'm
Traditional Integrated
sure many of you have heard Practice… Practice…
of.

Although the use of BIM is Building Information Model (BIM)...
promising in concept, another
major hurdle of implementing
this process in reality is that all
these various programs
currently don't play nicely with
each other... in other words
they are not very
interoperable. So what you
are currently seeing in the
industry, is a push to create
open standards by which all
these programs can better
communicate with each
other.

Information Technology Arenas...
What interests me, and what I'd
like to convey to you today, is
not that these programs will
eventually become
interoperable, but how this
future compatibility will effect
how architecture and building DataCAD
professionals will work in the
future. Autodesk VIZ
As technologies such a BIM Revit
programs become more and Chief
more compatible and are
able to network with each
Architect
Maya
other, you will start seeing all AutoCAD
these technologies, in MicroStation
essence, congeal into what
I'm calling 'vast information
technology arenas'.
IntelliCAD
Rhino Form-Z
TurboCAD
CATIA
Cadkey
Sketchup
VectorWorks

As these 'arenas', congeal into
Projects Becoming Open as Well...
networks that are more open
and transparent, what is
interesting, i think, is that not
only will these networks open,
but the individual projects
within them, will start
becoming more open as well.
Architects and Owners will start
realizing that the more they
open their projects within this Open
loose network, the more they
will see the benefits of this
Project
loose, decentralized
approach... benefits such as
lower costs and improved
quality.
The lion's share of these benefits is
not solely caused by the
technology making the
process more efficient, but
more by the technology's
ability to allow for more free
agency.
Because these open platforms
allow individuals to self-select
and self-organize around
projects that interest them
most, the increased benefits
of creativity, motivation, and
flexibility will result in a more
efficient process all together.

So, what on earth, does all this
have to so with virtual worlds? Growing Number of Virtual Worlds...
Well, along with the evolving BIM
programs out there, virtual
worlds like Second Life offer a
promising foundation on
which these technology
arenas could eventually
evolve from.
Actually many have written and
speculated that these
different arenas could
someday evolve into one
uber-sized arena known as
the Metaverse.
Although Second Life appears to
have a lot of early momentum
in establishing the protocols of
this metaverse, as you can
see from the slide, there are
plenty of competitors out
there.
Even though Second Life, or any
any other equivalent, has a
long way to go to be as
sophisticated as even the
simplest BIM, these worlds
embody four crucial factors
that give them the
advantage of establishing a
large part of the foundation
of this global BIM or
Metaverse as we are calling it.

1. First, the modeling and
creation tools found in many Why Virtual Worlds... 4 Critical Factors...
of these worlds are simple,
cheap, and easily accessible
for a large cross section of
people to use. The modeling and creation tools found in many of
1. these worlds are simple, cheap, and easily accessible
for a large cross section of people to use.
2. Secondly, There’s multiple
disciplines such as education,
entertainment, and
advertising that would benefit There’s multiple disciplines such as education,
from a 3 dimensional web, entertainment, and advertising that would benefit
and as a result more resources 2. from a 3 dimensional web, and as a result more
are channeled toward their
development. resources are channeled toward their development.
3. And because there's such a
cross section of interested
open standards within these virtual worlds will happen
parties, open standards within
these virtual worlds will
3. a lot quicker than open standards among the various
BIM programs.
happen a lot quicker than
open standards among the
various BIM programs out
there. And because they are used over the Internet, they are
4. networked on a massive scale.
4. And because they are used
over the internet, they are
networked on a massive
scale.

This 3-dimensional web or Global 'BIM' or Metaverse...
metaverse as many are
calling it, will undoubtedly
spring from the cross roads
between the BIM World and
virtual world, but my bet is
that worlds like Second Life,
will have a bigger advantage
in setting the stage for
creating the metaverse arena The
on which, not only architects
and building professionals will Metaverse
find themselves operating in,
but the world at large.
The BIM The Virtual World
World

With the time we have
remaining, i would like to
quickly take you through a
couple projects that Jon and I
have been working on
through the Second Life
group, 'Studio Wikitecture'.
We have been using Second Life
as a platform for conducting
experiments into how a loose,
decentralized network of
people could actually come
together and co-design a
piece of architecture. In
short, we've been conducting
experiments to flesh out what
an open source approach to
architecture might really look
like.
We call them Wikitecture
experiments.

This is our 1st experiment where a
number of people came Wikitecture 1.0
together to design a small
meeting kiosk...Wikitecture 1.0
was not really a true Wiki in
the sense that contributors
could not modify or delete
the contributions of others.
What resulted, although
interesting in its own right, was
an amalgamation of ‘stuff’
with not no overall coherency
or unity - a result we
expected.

In the 2nd experiment the group Wikitecture 2.0
designed a courtyard building
for group meetings. Unlike the
1st one, members were now
able to modify or delete their
fellow contributor's designs.

Wikitecture 2.0

In addition, to facilitate
communication, we set up a
Flickr Account that allowed
contributors to upload
descriptive snapshots of their
designs and leave feedback
as well.

With Wikitecture 2.0, we also Wikitecture 2.0
introduced an archiving
system, where members,
through community
consensus, were able to roll-
back the 'live' design to
previously saved iterations.
Here's an image of that
archiving kiosk with the
individual archiving plates...
where each plate stores an
individual design.
Although this system was still
rudimentary, the resultant
design was far more unified
and coherent than
Wikitecture 1.0.

Wikitecture 2.0

Wikitecture 2.0

For our 3rd experiment, of which
we are in currently in the Wikitecture 3.0
middle of, we are
collaboratively designing a
health clinic for one of poorer
regions in western Nepal, the
project is actually for a
competition hosted by the In-world Interface Website
‘Open Architecture Network.’
http://www.openarchitecture
network.org/challenge
Since the ‘Open Architecture
Network’ mission is all about
open sourcing architecture
for humanitarian purposes, we
thought it would be a perfect
opportunity to submit an entry
for this competition,
composed in the same
collaborative and open-
source fashion.
In an effort to continually
improve the concepts and
technology behind these
experiments, we wanted to
go beyond just mashing up
existing technologies and
actually develop a unique
Wikitecture platform, so we
teamed up with the software
designers from i3dnow to
develop both an in-world
interface and external 2d
website.
For the remainder of the time we have left, let's actually go into Second Life and I'll demonstrate some of the basic features of this in-world
interface, as well as cycle through some of the designs that have been submitted so far by contributors.

The Wikitecture Interface is made
up of 2 major components,
the first is called the 'Wiki-Tree'
and the second is the
'Viewing Kiosk'.
The 'wiki-tree' makes up the bulk
of the in-world interface,
which is made up of this 'trunk'
looking interface and the
archiving canopy above...
which are these colored
spheres you see here.
The viewing kiosk, here, is used to
view images and comments
associated with the individual
designs from the archiving
canopy.

So going back to the
canopy...These spherical
'archive leaves' are for storing
the individual design iterations
throughout the duration of the
project.
Although not always the case,
the general rule will typically
apply: one spherical 'archive
leaf' = one design iteration =
one contributor.
The proximity of one ‘leaf’ to the
next indicates that the designs
contained within, are very
similar derivatives of each
other. The further away a
‘leaf’ is from another,
indicates either a major
change in the design
direction or an entirely new
direction all together.
The animated texture 'shooting'
between two ‘leaves’
indicates the direction the
designs were derived from
one another - such that one
will be the 'parent' of the
adjacent child leaf.
The color of the leaf correlates
with the number of votes its
particular design has been
given by the community. For
example, the more green a
leaf, the more votes… yellow
has less…and red, the least
number.

Now if you want to see the
images and/or the comments
associated with any particular
design you can view them on
the 6 screens inside the
viewing kiosk...3 of the screens
will be dedicated to
displaying images and the
other 3 screens are dedicated
to displaying comments
associated with the particular
design.
This area is especially helpful,
when for those who want to
communicate their designs
informally with a smaller group
of individuals.

So, in summary to wrap things up,
if thousands of people can Global 'BIM' or Metaverse...
collaborate to create an
operating system or an
encyclopedia, what’s next?
Can peer production and
distributed collaboration be
harnessed in designing
architecture, our cities?.
Although these technologies will
will allow for more free
agency in the profession and
a more efficient process all
together, the take home
lesson here is not to think you
can finally live the 'Howard
Roark' dream and become
an heroic architect removed
from the rest of the world.
Although you might have
more freedom in the future to
pursue those projects that
interest you, these projects will
be evolving in a hyper-
collaborative environment, a
place where the team skills of
negotiation and compromise
are key factors to success.
Although naive to think the processes of open source software or the ideals of Wikipedia and the like can be applied to architecture in a
one to one fashion, we think there are a lot of lessons to be learned here. Although the building tools in Second Life pale in comparison to
even the simplest modeling program, because of its network capabilities, we think it's a perfect platform to explore what an open source
approach to architecture might look like. And because the clinic in Nepal is be designed in an open source fashion, that means if you
think you can improve upon the design, you are more than welcome to change it.
More heads, the better and since they send the winning team to Nepal to realize the actual design, you could be spending your spring break
building and perhaps climbing Mount Everest.

“If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get
what you always got.” Sir Michael Latham
Thanks...
Jon Brouchoud
(Keystone Bouchard in Second Life)
Ryan Schultz
(Theory Shaw in Second Life)